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Sizzling Stop: A Lot of Room for Improvement

It’s nice to know that there are good alternatives to fast food dining. Most of the time, I am looking for local restaurants that offer good food at fast food prices, even if at times my search leads to me to some really good carinderias (street eateries). So around midnight of February 21st, 2009, Noreen and I decided to drive out to the Pasay Road area to find delightful sustenance for our grumbling tummies.

Because most of the restaurants in the Little Tokyo area were closed, we drove back up to Pasay Road until we found this 24-hour restaurant that offered sizzling food, aptly named Sizzling Stop. I stopped and signaled to turn up the parking ramp and it took the guard some 3 minutes before removing the marker, even asked us where we wanted to go. Obviously we wanted to eat at the restaurant, I don’t understand why the guard had to ask us. Perhaps there were people parking there who just used the space but didn’t eat at the restaurant, which was understandable.

I ordered the liempo because the attendant said it was their best seller. As seen in the picture, it is supposed to be served with achara and a sauce, probably soy sauce. When it arrived at my table it looked like this:

No achara, no sauce. When I stuck my fork in it, the whole thing turned out to be undercooked. The meat was tough and the fat was even tougher. Not to mention the meat was almost as small as a bacon slice.

I returned it to the counter where I explained that if the fat is cooked it should be soft. They immediately apologized and replaced the order with this:

Most of it was cooked this time, but one end of it was still raw. I think that their cook is not so experienced in preparing the usual sizzlers.

Bad food and bad service can be forgivable. However, it’s not the same for roaches in a restaurant. It’s a basic necessity that food places need to be sanitary. The steps of their Arnaiz Avenue branch were teeming with roaches, but I did not take a picture of that because it’s outside the restaurant and this could be reasoned as outside their responsibility. But the tables SHOULD NOT BE CRAWLING WITH ROACHES! When I saw it, I immediately stopped eating, paid my bill and left. We had no recourse but to satisfy our hunger at the nearest Wendy’s restaurant along Makati Avenue.

I appeal to the owners of this restaurant to please re-evaluate the cleanliness of their Arnaiz Avenue branch, as well as their other branches. I also hope they can look closely at the quality of the food they serve. I personally don’t mind the size, as meat prices have gone up, but it would be good to make sure that the meat they serve is well-cooked and not so tough to the bite.